That's the downside of depending on regressive income taxes instead of taxing assets, capital gains, dividends, etc sufficiently.
I think California had the highest capital gains tax in the US.
Readit Newsvondur commented on California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters sfchronicle.com/californi... · Posted by u/littlexsparkee
California’s economy feels like it’s running on tech companies at this point. Any downturn in their hiring has really big effects on the California state budget.
vondur commented on Comparing baseball greats across eras, who comes out on top? phys.org/news/2025-07-bas... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
vondur commented on All-In on Omarchy at 37signals world.hey.com/dhh/all-in-... · Posted by u/dotcoma
Previously:
> March 7, 2024: Committing to Windows
https://world.hey.com/dhh/committing-to-windows-2d6388fd
> June 6, 2024: Introducing Omakub (based on Ubuntu)
https://world.hey.com/dhh/introducing-omakub-354db366
Place your bets on what is next: nixOS? Haiku? OpenBSD?
I haven't seen his earlier post about Windows. Kinda funny. He's put quite a lot of effort into Omarchy now though.
vondur commented on Did California's fast food minimum wage reduce employment? nber.org/papers/w34033... · Posted by u/lxm
It's still a net loss of jobs. I'm certain the future will involve increasing automation to further reduce headcount. A McDonald's recently opened near me with no seating, and orders can only be placed through the app or at the drive thru. I spoke with the owner who mentioned two main reasons for this setup: first, ongoing issues with the local homeless population and second, a desire to minimize staffing. Fewer employees are needed when there's no dining area to clean or counter to staff. I’m pretty sure this is the direction things are headed in California.
vondur commented on Honesty Boxes in Scotland (2024) awayfromtheordinary.com/2... · Posted by u/NaOH
This definitely isn't just a Scotland thing... I grew up in Alabama and this was common there, and honestly I've seen this all over rural America. It's very common for farm stands during the harvesting season.
Still, cool website, I enjoyed a few articles there even if this one was very short.
Yes, I've seen this in rural America. Purchased some firewood at a random stand on the highway. Pick some up, leave $5 in the box. Really nice to see this sort of thing in action.
vondur commented on FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and affordable techdirt.com/2025/08/05/t... · Posted by u/CharlesW
American exceptionalism is odd, in that sometimes it is "we are better than everyone else", but sometimes it is "we can't have the nice things that all other rich countries have, because [nonsense reason]".
A popular one is 'density', and, okay, maybe this is somewhat true if you're talking about, say, Wyoming (though I think not as true as people often think), but California, for instance, has an only slightly lower population density than _France_, and at that point "we can't have proper transport/telecoms/whatever because density" is just an excuse, and not a convincing one.
There are vast parts of California that are pretty much empty. However, the lack of competition in broadband at the consumer level does suck.
vondur commented on FCC abandons efforts to make U.S. broadband fast and affordable techdirt.com/2025/08/05/t... · Posted by u/CharlesW
Well, they weren't exactly doing a bang up job with it.
vondur commented on Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year helsinkitimes.fi/finland/... · Posted by u/DaveZale
Pretty impressive. I doubt you'd find a comparably sized US city with zero traffic deaths in a year.
>The government’s gotta run it
But there are plenty of countries with functioning healthcare systems that are private? The Swiss, for instance. Moreover depending on what counts as "government’s gotta run it" (paying for it? administering it? actually providing care?) you can argue that the German or even Canadian systems aren't government run, at least to some degree.
I've heard good things about the Dutch system of healthcare and that it may be adoptable to the US. I'd totally agree that healthcare corporations become non profit like Kaiser here in the US. They aren't perfect, but they seem to be better than the their for profit competitors.